The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee

"As soon as coffee is in your stomach, there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move ... similes arise, the paper is covered. Coffee is your ally and writing ceases to be a struggle."- Honore de Balzac (1799-1859)

Never alone.

I have to warn you that posts here in Drafts and Brews are sometimes dark, mostly hopeful, always personal. I merely write what is within, sharing my experiences of emotions that are universal to all of us, in an effort to better understand myself and why I am here.

I hope that voicing out my struggles can, at the very least, help you realize that ours is a collective story - you are never alone, and you can always reach out to others who have also lived your story. You can be in touch with me on Twitter.

have you ever experienced moving from one place to another, or from one task to another, only "peripherally" conscious of what you are doing? the world, for all you care, is going by in a blur. all you're aware of is a soreness in that part that you call "heart" and your mind is all but blank, everything isn't what it seems, and the concept of "pain" is all that you can very well understand....

all too often people refer to the physical world as the 'real' world - school. work... almost everything that constitutes our daily routine... the things that gives 'purpose' to our daily lives.... when we feel out of 'touch', we are likely to be described as living in the surreal; in a cloud of unrealism, be it fears or daydreams, that is so far from the very actualities of our everyday existence... but what exactly is 'real'? how do we define it? isn't something that affects the way we do the things we do everyday as real as the things that are affected? isn't a feeling which defines how you go about your daily tasks as real as the tasks themselves? how can something which occupies you in all your being, no matter what activity you are in, be unreal?

the point is, we do not just exist. the tasks we do everyday are basically but exercises designed for the machines that our bodies are. we are more than just bodies. there is a being within each one of us that thrives on more than just what the five senses can experience. we are blessed with the miracle of life and if life is what we are after, we should pay closer attention to what is happening deep inside us. it is very sad that all too often, we shy away from asking ourselves how we really feel and, more importantly, in honestly answering that question. in so doing, we are effectively and single-handedly robbing ourselves the chance to even know what life, "REAL LIFE", is basically about.

it has been said that knowing the problem is halfway to solving it. if we ourselves are afraid to even want to look for an understanding of how we really "function" as the unique individuals that we are - what makes us happy, what makes us sad, what fulfills us, no matter how unconventional or even horrifying for some people or even all of society, how can we even start to truly LIVE?

how could you know others without knowing who you are first? it would be like looking into a mirror with a group of people and being unable to identify whose face is yours among those faces staring back at you... how dare you seek appreciation from others without even knowing how to appreciate yourself? and how could you claim to know love if you do not even know who you are?

there are answers to every question. a question has to be asked first though, before it can be answered. if you lost something, the logical place to start looking for it is where you lost it. the same thing goes for us. if you feel lost, don't go looking for yourself in other people. look within. you are there underneath all the "layers".if you find your self lacking purpose, make one. you do not need other people to tell you what to make of your life. it is ours alone to live, no matter how hard they try to claim it as theirs. it is stupidity to blame others for what most of us later realize as a waste of time, of our precious years, doing things we don't really want to. you are given enough resources to be able to enjoy your time on earth to the fullest. shame on you if you are that foolish to expect others to do your duty to yourself; that is, to live for you, when they too have their own lives to fulfill.

to LIVE is easy enough... if we can muster enough courage to first and foremost, find out who we really are in our most basic sense... and dare to be exactly that person and no other by being true to ourselves - acknowledging how we really feel, expressing our thoughts and feelings, fighting for and following through on our ideals by being living examples, daring to dream, and striving to make our dreams come true.

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"We are all too easily seduced away from the truth, the reality of our own inward experience, which may often seem beyond communication and hence beyond respect or value. Too easily, in the name of the good, or the rational, or the moral, or the Christian, or the democratic, or even the merely socially acceptable, we blink away the actualities of our condition - the feelings, drives, dreams, and desires that express, with painful accuracy, the depths at which we really live. Not where we think or imagine we should live, or where society advises us to live, but where our lives are fueled and our deepest satisfactions experienced - this is what we disregard. We allow ourselves too often to live lives that our secondhand & largely theoretical, devoted to goods we do not truly desire, to gods in whom we do not truly believe."- DREAMS OF LOVE & FATEFUL ENCOUNTERS: The Power of Romantic Passion/ Ethel S. Person